Ninja Bee is best known for its Kefling series but they decided to try something a little different this time. A ninja squirrel who must complete simple objectives while staying clear of foxes roaming around the one screen levels to get away with the acorns he desires. Nutjitsu was released for Windows 8 already but it has made its way to the Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program.

There are two modes in Nutjitsu: Ninja Missions and Survival. The latter challenges you to collect as many acorns as possible for as long as possible. The former consists of a handful of objective based missions: collecting a total number of acorns(regarless of color), collecting a specific color, gathering disappearing scrolls and lastly standing in designated areas for a certain amount of time.

Power-ups are available that you can use to evade and thwart your would be captors. However you have to play the game for quite a bit of time to earn enough acoins(yes, acoins) to purchase them. What is even more annoying is that you need to play long enough to earn the privilege to buy many
of them. After about 10-15 minutes you will likely have seen most of what Nutjitsu has to offer. I suspect that the free PC version allows you to make in-game purchases for these power-ups, so it could be worse.

Nutjitsu is also the first snappable game on Xbox One, although I’m not sure what advantages that provides. While it’s nice to see an Xbox One game for less than $10, this game is still something I’d only recommend for less than $5. It’s not a bad game, it just isn’t very interesting and is something you would probably only play while waiting for another game to download or install.

Scale:*
Worth a buy – paying full price for fans of the series or genre makes sense – often includes a caveat
Worth a buy on sale – not quite full price worthy but close, – often includes a caveat
Rent – rent before buying
No – borrow it if you must play it
Please no – Don’t waste any time and/or money on it